Need for the mobile workforce

By Afam Nnaji on February, 26 2008

Views: 2,808

If care is not taken very soon some of us will have to get up in the morning by 3.00pm and hit the road by 3.30am so as to get to our offices before 7.00am or 7.30am. Then in the evening we will have to leave our offices by say 9.30pm or 10.00pm so as to avoid the ever present evening traffic. Now if this is not unhealthy, stressful and sad then I wonder what it is.

Beyond dealing with physical goods in organizations today most of the work employees do are done with the computers. These computers as a matter of fact can be accessed right there in your office or remotely from the comfort of your home.

The issue of security comes in but of course there are more than enough security features that make remote access to office network as secure as the perimeter based network where the physical location of the office determines who sees what and does what on the organization’s network. Virtual Private Networks are easy to set up and deploy. Why a lot of organizations are not utilizing this is something I cannot figure out.

These days the average worker gets to the office with a lot of lost sleep and such an employee will never be able to be as productive as someone who sleeps well and gets to the office without much stress. In order to increase productivity and employee satisfaction necessary tools likes handhelds and laptops could be given to certain employees so they can connect to the organization’s network even from the comfort of their homes.

Documents created or scanned can be stored in shared folders where team members can access them if need be.

Emails and websites should be utilized to the fullest if organizations don’t have an internal network they would not want people to access remotely no matter how secure it is to do so. Once you web enable your business process it will be easy for you to run your business from any location in the world, all you will require is a computer that is connected to the internet.

Personally, I work from anywhere whether I am in the office, at home or outside Lagos, all that I need is a pc connected to the web. Those I work with don’t necessarily need to be in the office as they also get to rely on phones, text messages, emails and of course the website to access any information they may need.

A lot of money is being wasted and productivity lost as we sit in the cars for hours waiting for the heavy traffic to ease not to talk about the stress and dangers of leaving the home very early in the morning and getting back very late at night on a daily basis.

There are tools to help us work smarter rather than harder why not consider them?